My Weakness, My Gravest Mistake
by Insideavoice
Summary: Working at a record store in Philly, Jess is reminded of the day he and Rory first met, what life had been like as a kid with Liz and Jimmy, and the mistakes he made along the way. Sung to the tune of "Under Pressure" by Queen and David Bowie. Oneshot.


**IMPORTANT: *If Liz came to drop off Jess at Stars Hollow, instead of his taking the bus there.**

***If Jess and Rory first met randomly in town and not at her house.**

***If Jess worked at a record store after Venice Beach but before publishing his first book. (sorry, I mean: 'short novel.')**

***If Jimmy hadn't left when Jess was a baby…but later, like when Jess was around ten or something.**

**Sorry for all the "ifs." I originally wrote this for an English assignment, but then (after tweaking a few things) was reminded of Jess.**

**WARNING: Super cheesy. May seem out of character. But I couldn't help myself. Somehow I think beneath that leather exterior lays a regretful, harrowing hopeless romantic. But I could be wrong.**

A bell chimed, potential customers shuffling in. I didn't bother looking up from my seat behind the counter. By now I knew the drill.

People entered the record store to look around. If they wished to buy something, they'd bring it to the counter. If they needed to voice a question, they'd ask it. All I had to do was sit back and wait; an easy enough task for a guy who never got around to finishing his senior year of high school.

I shook my head slightly to myself, a sorry attempt to erase the thought from my mind, stirring my muddled dark hair and bringing a sure to be faraway look to my brown eyes.

Fortunately, I snapped out of my split second reverie as I spotted a girl approaching. Looking to be about thirteen, she spoke in a timid voice. She wondered if I could maybe possibly play a record for her. Shrugging my indifference, I took the album. I barely glanced at it but soon my calloused hands trembled. Slowly, I placed it in the record player, the needle touching down on the vinyl.

The all too familiar melody filled the room. Browsing customers drummed their fingers passing through aisles, a few hummed under their breath.

But with the words of David Bowie and one Freddie Mercury in my ear, I was in another place, to a time only years ago.

_Pressure  
__Pushing down on me…  
__Splits a family in two  
__Puts people on the street_

My mind's eye saw a rather tired black leather jacket, its collar popped at a suspiciously casual angle, remembering myself at age seventeen. At the time, the air froze the words my tongue bit back. I got out of the car. Liz looked as if she knew what was going through my mind.

"Jess," she warned, her eyes pleading that deeply serious 'mom look' that signaled she meant business. "_Don't start."_

Apathetic as ever, I shrugged it off. "Whatever."

As I automatically assumed she would, her eyes turned heavenward; at times she was as predictable as the inconspicuous worn paperback I kept strategically placed in my back pocket for easy access when life became particularly infuriating.

Such were the times from about the time I was seven until the move. Life at home could always snap easily from fine to infuriating in about three seconds flat.

No, it wasn't when Liz got me up for school and put breakfast on the table, humming some nameless melody absently under her breath. Or when I'd happily skip to school and actually _enjoy_ it. No. It was the time after school that was in constant danger of turning infuriating.

When Jimmy came home.

Like clockwork, the fighting would commence. _The neighbors' dogs were at it again. The dishes were dirty. The house was too cold. Jimmy wasn't around enough. Liz stayed home with _the boy_ too much._ But more often than not, the trouble was the bills that kept piling up.

Furious, my father shouted and yelled, the weight of the very world on his shoulders.

Yes, contention met our family like an old friend and it scared me. Scared me enough to force me into my room, fleeing to another world. A world of made-up stories and written words. Suddenly, I could no longer hear the raised voices through the paper thin walls.

_Mom and Dad, who?_

It seemed I had an escape.

_Turned away from it all like a blind man  
__Sat on a fence but it don't work  
__Keep coming up with love  
__But it's so slashed and torn_

Again my mind's eye flashed back to Liz that day when I was still seventeen. Getting out of the car and heading in the direction of one of those local diners, Mom went back to ignoring me. She was far too busy explaining to the air how I was finally "home."

I shook my head at her funny and twisted definition of the word. _Just because you spent your younger years in a particular place didn't exactly mean you could uproot your kid and move halfway across the country to return to the former shelf of a place._

Somehow that hadn't seemed like "home" to me.

_Insanity laughs  
__Under pressure we're breaking_

Trudging over in the direction of the diner and the promising proposal of lunch, my mom never even noticed when I stopped in my tracks. Spotting a park bench currently housing a teenage girl with a book in her hands, I became surprised, reluctantly intrigued; an emotion typically out of use since childhood.

Now I must admit, when we first met, I judged. As I would later come to expect, you had your nose in a book. I assumed at first that if not for Charles Dickens, your nose would instead be turned up in the air; an arrogant, ignorant small town little girl. But like Halloween on Christmas, I couldn't have been more wrong than on that first day.

Because on that first day, you seemed to see past my less than sunny demeanor. Sitting across the street, you happened to glance up. In your eyes, my "big, bad city boy" façade paled. Transparent.

On that first day, you smiled.

Why you would do such a thing was beyond me. Though I had only just arrived, I somehow knew that you must have heard about me. The stories they told. With people like Babette and Miss Patty, news was sure to travel fast in a small town. Marked "hoodlum" and "thief," no one looked me square in the eye. I barely spoke at all upon arriving, instead resolving to loathe the insipid stereotypical "small town" of Stars Hollow, though namely its odd populace.

But for whatever reason, when you smiled I questioned all of those doubts. My blind and steadfast determination to hate the tiny town and its obnoxious inhabitants wavered ever so slightly.

Naturally, you were sitting on a park bench with an omnipresent book when you caught my eye. A smile lighting your face, I thought of the fourth of July; an admission I would never_ ever _dare breathe to another living soul.

Slowly, without conscious thought, I meandered over to the weathered wooden park bench but didn't sit down. You marked the page in your book and I wondered if I should feel honored. It was then that you flashed another grin and I figured you really took that "smiles are free" saying to heart.

Stuffing my hands in the pockets of my old trusty, tattered blue jeans, the usual "heys" were exchanged. I didn't say anything and I was sure you wondered why I even bothered.

But then you surprised me. You stuck out a hand and introduced yourself; an action not typical of your average seventeen year old. "Hi," you practically sang as I hesitantly shook your hand, all the while confounded by the action. "I'm Rory Gilmore."

"Jess," I told you simply, though I was sure you already knew. "Jess Mariano."

"Well, Jess. Jess Mariano," you stated with a third smile. _Or perhaps it was only the second one still frozen in place?_ "Welcome to Stars Hollow." _But I liked to think you gave me another one._

There were a lot of things I liked to think about you, Rory. But somehow the ones I _didn't_ want to think about were in greater supply. The shelves were stocked with the things I wished I had done. The words I wished I'd said. I liked to think that even though I didn't talk about it much even after that first day, you were somehow able to connect the dots about my parents' divorce— Jimmy's leaving— about how I soon grew accustomed to the old noise and volume of their constant fighting and learned to shut it out.

This was my greatest weakness. My gravest mistake. Shutting everything out became a bad habit of mine. The worst was that along the way, I shut out people. Me, the big bad city boy, slammed shut the door in your face and ran. Stupidly, I fled from the one person who made me feel anything close to the word all the stories claimed as "love."

'_Cause Love's such an old fashioned word  
__And Love dares you  
__To care for the people on the edge of the night  
__And Love dares you  
__To change our way  
__of caring about ourselves_

Rory, if this letter ever reaches you, I just hope you hear all that I didn't say. Here, the walls mock me, my haunting thoughts echoing in this dingy city record store, screaming back: "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Rory. Could you ever forgive me?"

_This is our last dance  
__This is ourselves  
__Under pressure_


End file.
